Ooooo he got upset because Apple is not innovating? Aha got it because when Apple does not innovate it means Google does not "innovate", since google is just copying iOS and your partners like HTC, Samsung are copying the hardware design. Yes Schmidt you are right it is so sad that based on your informations Apple is not innovating anymore or maybe you don't have access to their new innovation as an INSIDER just like 3 4 years ago that you were on board at Apple.

Cloud Synchronization? Over-the-air updates? Photo sharing? Twitter? Wpw! I bet Apple never thought of all of these before. Thank you Google for shining your light. How can Apple create anything without your guidance.

What is it *this time*, Eric? It's not enough you ripped off Apple something serious, but you then have to point an accusatory finger at them.

Apple is the one that has been doing all the "innovating" in the first place.

Android would probably look like BlackBerry OS (just look at the original screenshots) if iOS hadn't been released. But Eric was taking notes at those board meetings.

First came the iPhone. Then, out of nowhere, everything else looked like an iPhone. Everyone else introduced an App Store modelled on the REAL App Store.

Apple releases the iPad. Then every other tablet out there (they also-rans suddenly got back into the game) started looking like an iPad. Well, alright, they *tried* to look like an iPad.

No wonder Steve was monumentally pissed at Eric.

Apple has been getting ripped off since 2007. They are now responding because there is too much out there that violates their IP. The infringements have reached critical mass. Apple is now looking to clean up the game. This is normal.

Over 200 million ipods, practically invented the smart phone, ipads off the chart .......he needs to look in the mirror........

I hate to break it to you but Nokia invented the smartphone. Nokias could do just as much as iphones can before iphones even existed, albeit minus the huge app-mine and modern processor speeds. In fact, if you can put up with a quirky, but mostly stable OS, then a Nokia phone is far more versatile and sophisticated than an iphone. Don't get me wrong, I love apple products and would only EVER buy apple computers, but when it comes to phones I stick to nokia. And avoid android, haha...

Here and elsewhere, Google has been criticized for not defending their Android licensees. Now they are finally speaking up and vowing to defend their allies, as they should. Yet, Schmidt is not only being criticized but is in fact trashed for it. I wonder why some of you need to attack someone you don't know in such a denigrating manner. What is the source of your venom? I love my Apple products; however, I just don't feel the need to spit on the competition of Apple. Is there something wrong with me? Or perhaps some of you need to put on a new pair of glasses to properly see the world? Relax! Chill! Enjoy what you have and let others make their own choices!

They will say Apple want to destroy Android.. Apple's scared of Android.. blah blab. And they call us fanboys.

I don't imagine Apple is "scared" of Android at all. I do think they were taken by surprise at how quickly it's grabbed hold of market share, but Apple still has the better overall product.

IMHO, I think Apple is simply trying to slow Android by whatever means necessary. I have no doubt they recognize there's no way for them to keep up with hardware innovations when new phones from multiple suppliers are cropping up seemingly every few days. To try and level the playing field they HAVE turned to the courts aggressively the past few months. I doubt any regulars here would deny that. And they've particularly targeted the most serious competitors.

Sammy's in the crosshairs because of their very well received and well-built S2 smartphones and for having the audacity to create a tablet thinner than the iPad. Thinness has been an Apple hallmark, and I think Mr Jobs may have taken it personally when Samsung made it a point to out-do Apple on that particular feature.

HTC got Apple's attention with well designed, high quality, hi-end smartphones that actually do compete favorably with the iPhone (ie, Thunderbolt and Sensation). The cheap Android phones that some of the others produce are of no concern to Apple right now IMO.

I hate to break it to you but Nokia invented the smartphone. Nokias could do just as much as iphones can before iphones even existed, albeit minus the huge app-mine and modern processor speeds. In fact, if you can put up with a quirky, but mostly stable OS, then a Nokia phone is far more versatile and sophisticated than an iphone. Don't get me wrong, I love apple products and would only EVER buy apple computers, but when it comes to phones I stick to nokia. And avoid android, haha...

If he and Google decides to defend HTC & other Android vendors, they will be really biting themselves in the a$5. Purposely sending in Eric Schmidt to become a Apple board member at the time when Apple is preparing the 1st iPhone, having him call Google and their possible vendors after each meeting telling them what they can do and what materials they need so that the Nexus One looks and behaves like the 1st and then current iPhone so that it's a great alternative choice IS what Apple and all of us call stealing. Yeah, piss off Apple some more to show you and others what and how much great other innovations can come from them, so you can copy some more. I wouldn't be so surprised to see, read, and hear if people called Google the next coming of Microsoft, and these same people started speculating if Eric Schmidt and Bill Gates are somehow related.

Here and elsewhere, Google has been criticized for not defending their Android licensees. Now they are finally speaking up and vowing to defend their allies, as they should. Yet, Schmidt is not only being criticized but is in fact trashed for it. I wonder why some of you need to attack someone you don't know in such a denigrating manner. What is the source of your venom? I love my Apple products; however, I just don't feel the need to spit on the competition of Apple. Is there something wrong with me? Or perhaps some of you need to put on a new pair of glasses to properly see the world? Relax! Chill! Enjoy what you have and let others make their own choices!

No one in this thread attacked him personal, only his moronic statement and his despicable behavior as a member of the board of directors at Apple.

His statement is ludicrous, what innovations have HTC or Samsung brought to the mobile industry in the past few years? Should Apple just continue to allow others to profit off their work? We are not talking about crushing bright innovative competition, we are talking about slowing massive multi-national copy machines.

Sure, they try to put their own twist to it, but using someone else's patented technology and adding to it is still stealing.

Actually depending on your twist and additions, using someone else's tech as a starting point isn't legally 'stealing'. It's actually allowed in patent law. It's still a douche move to try to claim you didn't use someone else's idea but it's not always illegal.

That said, Schmidt's comments about 'legal fun' are not cute in my book and I agree that he needs to just admit that while Android was perhaps under construction when Apple released the first iphone, no one else was willing to whip it out and take such a huge risk in releasing that kind of product and since then even Android has been doing the same "doing it better than what is out there" that Apple does. Making them no more or less innovative than Jobs and friends.

3 of those 5 things are simply natural progression of the tech. Apple would have gotten to them at some point even if Android didn't exist so that's hardly 'borrowing'. And in truth, one could probably put the whole Twitter thing in there as well. Apple has been including Facebook and Flickr in their tech for a while, adding in Twitter due to its massive popularity just makes sense.

Wow, Eric Schmidt doesn't know what innovation means? He must be an idiot. If I knew it was that easy to be a successful CEO in Silicon Valley I'd have gone there and done it myself.

What's that? He's not an idiot? He graduated from Princeton AND UC Berkeley? Why then...He must be wilfully spreading lies. I guess that makes this...

FUD.

If I'm not mistaken the average college GPA for a CEO is something like 2.8 or 2.6. So academically speaking they are neither the hardest working nor the most intelligent people. You can graduate from Berkley with a C allot easier than you could graduate with all A's at just about any school. I don't think SJ graduated from college and we all know Gates didn't either. CEO... toughest job to get, but the easiest job to perform.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gatorguy

So what is it he did behind Apple's back? Serious question.

Obviously none of us really know the details, but as I recall months after Schmidt was dismissed from the Apple board for a conflict of interest Android came out. It doesn't take much to put two and two together.

Google was working on a Black Berry like phone OS. Schmidt got to check out iOS (as a board member) and realized Google was heading in the wrong direction. "poof" the market magically gets a "free" OS that resembles iOS in many ways.

He abused his privileges as an Apple board member and used them to conduct "corporate espionage" IMO.

turtles all the way up and turtles all the way down... infinite context means infinite possibility

I don't imagine Apple is "scared" of Android at all. I do think they were taken by surprise at how quickly it's grabbed hold of market share, but Apple still has the better overall product.

IMHO, I think Apple is simply trying to slow Android by whatever means necessary. I have no doubt they recognize there's no way for them to keep up with hardware innovations when new phones from multiple suppliers are cropping up seemingly every few days. To try and level the playing field they HAVE turned to the courts aggressively the past few months. I doubt any regulars here would deny that. And they've particularly targeted the most serious competitors.

+1

And I think Apple wouldn't mind too much if Android is just not an iPhone clone. If they're being successful by looking like BB I don't think Apple would mind that at all.
That said I don't have problem with Android in general. It has its place. What I have problem with is a company like Google who claimed to "be no evil.." yet...

Serious answer, he was privy to all sorts of high level privileged info as both a board member and business partner during most of the years that Apple was developing the iPhone. He was able to jumpstart a skunkworks in Google and feed Andy Rubin Apples touchscreen MO and other design/business plans. All in secret, in violation of his non-disclosure.

Criminal action, cut and dried.

But the damage has been done & instead of going after the perp, the sensible thing is go after the fabbers. Plus, Google and Apple still have business agreements of their own. Not sure what the remedy will be or should be, but given that it has already started to create confusion and uncertainty for Android fabbers, its off to a good start. Google is trying to shore up a bevy of freaked fabbers. Why they would have Eric lay down this screed is a mystery and it has obviously unleashed a tsunami of venom. His crime was done with a lot of witnesses, he doesn't have any credibility whatsoever.

For the record, Eric still smarts from when Jobs ripped him a new one.

Um Monsanto produces products that hurt people. Apple is not in that bag. Further Monsanto is in the business of copywriting genetics, allowing their seeds to cross pollinate and then suing farmers that harvested their own seeds; in some cases despite thousands of years of agricultural history.

I understand the analogy, but "heirloom" farmers didn't willfully cross pollinate their crops with Monsanto's seeds because they were better and then accuse Monsanto of "litigating innovation".

Google on the other hand did willfully infuse iOS "genes" into Andriod.

It's just my opinion. We'll all see where the courts stand as time progresses, but we already have some evidence from the ITC on where they stand.

turtles all the way up and turtles all the way down... infinite context means infinite possibility

Sad to read such embarrasing garbage from Schmidt. I lost some respect for Google today. He knows Apple is by far the most innovative company in smart phone business. And he knows his company copied Apple's work instead of innovating.

I am getting very violent feelings. I feel the urge to stuff him into a locker.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ipodguy.1804

This schmidt guy is funny lol. Total fail, he cheated by being an apple board of directors moved to google and implement the whole thing then say apple is not innovating. This guy is an ***.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quadra 610

Is Eric T. Mole flapping his gums again?

Still insist nothing personal has been written here?

No one here knows exactly what happened. It's all hearsay. We do know, however, that Schmidt left the Apple board meetings on specific occasions to avoid conflict of interest. We also know that Schmidt only left the Apple board (either voluntarily or not) in 2009 and not earlier. Surely, if Apple felt so strongly about Schmidt acting unethically, they would have been rather dumb to keep him as a director for two years after the launch of the iPhone, particularly since Google acquired Android a few years earlier. In fact, the evidence suggests that Apple was not particularly smart in keeping Schmidt on. If indeed Google learned a few tricks via this relationship, shouldn't Apple shoulder the blame at least in part for missing the obvious? To repeat, Google bought Android in 2005!!!

There is always more to a story than meets the eye, even if you're personally engaged in the situation. Since we are all sidelines spectators here, I just don't see justification for the venomous passion. Instead, I worry about some of you. Are you unemployed? Do you have anger management issues? Sadly, there is no app for that.

Google isn't really worried about the legal threats to android, because they don't make any money from android. They make money from ads on android - and other phones - so all they care about is that they have good ad-serving access. They have to at least make the appearance of defending their partners, of course, because being papa GOOG is part of what guarantees them entree, but HTC suffers a huge financial setback it doesn't cost them anything.

They don't want android to crater, of course, because it's a critical source of leverage in mobil advertising, but I'm not sure they really care as long as it remains a player.

So copying someone else's term paper is now a good thing, or to take it to an extreme, if someone steals your car, you're just a whiner if you file a police report when it's so obvious you should just be quiet and go buy another one?

Google would LOVE to see some more innovation without Apple protecting their IP since it would just give them more things to copy.

Cloud Synchronization? Over-the-air updates? Photo sharing? Twitter? Wpw! I bet Apple never thought of all of these before. Thank you Google for shining your light. How can Apple create anything without your guidance.

Every single one of those existed before Android was released on a device.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Serious answer, he was privy to all sorts of high level privileged info as both a board member and business partner during most of the years that Apple was developing the iPhone. He was able to jumpstart a skunkworks in Google and feed Andy Rubin Apples touchscreen MO and other design/business plans. All in secret, in violation of his non-disclosure.

Criminal action, cut and dried.

If Apple had positive proof that Schmidt had violated an NDA they could legally attack him on it personally, even a strong case would allow them a discovery phase where they could investigate his emails etc to try to find proof. The cost to Schmidt if he was found to have violated could be substantial, in principle it can result in criminal prosecution. It seems hard to believe that Apple would choose not to pursue this line if things were as clear cut as you present.